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19 

7 
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THE CHANGED OUTLOOK 



ADDRESS BY 



NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, LL. D. 

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



DELIVERED AT THE ONE HUNDRED AND 
FORTY -S EVENTH ANNUAL BANQUET OF 
THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE 
STATE OF NEW YORK, NOVEMBER EIGHTEENTH 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN 



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THE CHANGED OUTLOOK. 
ADDRESS BY NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER. 

Mr. President, Gextlkmkn of the Chamber. — Four years 
ago you gave me the privilege of speaking in this presence. At that 
time I chose as my subject, Business and Politics. AVe were then 
approaching the end of a Presidential term and facing a national elec- 
tion ; we were concerned, gravely concerned, with domestic problems, 
particularly with those manifold and important questions which 
arise out of the relations between government and business. 
To-night I have chosen as the topic on which to speak to you, 
quite informally and briefly, The Changed Outlook ; for in the interval 
of those four years there has been a revolution in our thinking and 
a complete change in the prospect that opens out before us. Once 
again we are- approaching the end of a Presidential term and once 
again we are facing a national election, but the outlook to-day is 
strangely and solemnly difterent from what it was four years ago. 

It is not easy for one who lives in the midst of on-rushing events to 
judge calmly and accurately either of their significance or of their 
direction. The man who is borne helplessly down stream by a roaring 
torrent has little opportunity to observe the foliage that may adorn 
the banks, or to determine with certainty whether he is to be dashed 
to pieces by the cataract of Niagara or borne harmlessly into the 
peaceful waters of a mountain lake. So it is with ourselves. The 
wild onrush of events in a world of war ; the sudden and start- 
ling changes in finance, in commerce, in industry ; the quick 
movement of armies and of navies by which some of the hopes 
and ambitions of two generations are gratified; the dazed perplexity of 



the world's most trusted leaders, — all these are characteristic of the 
days through which we are living. 

When the mid-summer sun set on the evening of Friday, 
July 31, 1914, it set upon a world upon which it was never to rise 
again. Never again was that sun to rise upon the same world. 
As if by magic, transportation and communication stopped ; the wells 
of credit were dried up ; commerce and industry were brought to a 
standstill ; men leaped to arms and to the assembling of the devilishly 
ingenious instruments of destruction ; science which had been caring for 
the health, the comfort and the prosperity of man was instantly bent 
with amazing ingenuity and skill to the wholesale slaughter of human 
beings and to the destruction and waste of property on a scale unpre- 
cedented in all recorded history. This is neither the time nor the 
place to inquire why these strange and startling things took place. 
It is sufficient to observe that they did take place and that the 
whole world order was changed in a night. 

The peoples who are engaged in this titanic struggle are not un- 
tamed barbarians or wild Indians of the virgin forest. They are 
the best trained and most highly educated peoples in the world. 
They have had every advantage that schools and universities can 
offer, and they have been associated for generations with literature 
and science and art and everything that is fine and splendid in what 
we call civilization. What we now know, even those of us who 
were most loath to believe it, is that under this thin veneer of civil- 
ization the elementary human passions of jealousy, envy, hatred and 
malice were so lightly confined that at the touch of a magic spring 
they burst forth to overwhelm everything that seems to make life 
worth living. Moreover, it is now so plain that even the dullest can 
see that the nations of Europe had been psychologically, politically, 
and even strategetically, at war for many years. In the guise of an 
armed peace they were really in conflict, and jealousy, suspicion and 
intrigue were abroad on every hand. Plans of instant mobilization 
and of quick attack were all in reatliness, and the more ardent spirits 
were tugging hard at the bonds of conventionality that restrained 
them from overt acts. Europe had been at war for years. What 



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happened on August 1, li)I4, was that the curtain was lifted so that 
all men niiuht see; and the physical conflict of armies and navies 
followed as a final and dramatic incident in a contest that was on that 
day made evident, but tint was not on that day begun. 

If I read history aright, only once before since the beginning of 
man's records has any siiniliar catastrophe occurred in the Western 
world. With the downfall of the Roman Empire and the inrush of 
the barbarian hordes from the forests and plains of the North there 
was a wiping out of Greek and Roman civilization and of their evi- 
dences that was as complete as it was terrible. From that day to 
this there has been no similar cata 'Jysm in Europe. There have been 
wars, many and severe. There have been revolutions devastating 
and terrible. There has been the spectacle of the great Napoleon 
defying the whole of Europe, but finally succumbing to the power of 
his adversaries. But not since the break up of Roman civilization 
has the world seen anything that can compare with what is now 
going on before our eyes. Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia are 
being tramped by contending armies or are held in the grip of the 
laws of war. 

It is idle to say, gentlemen, quite idle to say, that the American 
people are on the other side of the world and that these clashings and 
crashings are no concern of theirs. Ask the cotton grower in the 
South, or the copper miner in the far West, or the lumberman on 
Puget Sound, or the shipper in New York, in Baltimore, or New 
Orleans, or the banker in Wall street, in State street or in La Salle 
street, whether he knows that there is a war in Europe, and get his 
answer. Ask the student of international law, or the expounder of 
political ethics and the sanctity of treaties, or tlie devoted believer in 
civil liberty, whether the United States has any interest in this conflict, 
and get his answer ! 

No, Mr. President, it is no longer possible for the United States, 
ostrich like, to plunge its head into the sands of a supposed isolation 
and to assume that its policies, its influences, and its ideals are not 
part of the wider world. [Applause.] The outlook has wholly 
changed. The future, and in particular the immediate future, is 



cliarged with serious international interest and with heavy interna- 
tional responsibility. Of this interest we cannot divest ourselves, and 
of this responsibility we dare not, without proving false to our trust 
as guardians of the conscience of democracy and keepers of the faith 
in civil liberty as the highest political aim and object of mankind. 
[Applause.] . 

There are reasons, good and sufficient and easily understood by the 
reader of history, why America's interest in international conditions is 
now much greater and much more important than ever before. In 
the history of people, it is a well-known fact that internal national 
development must precede international influence and direction. Not 
until a nation has unitied itself, perfected reasonably well its instru- 
ments of government and become conscious of an ideal and of a mission 
which that ideal serves, can it be ready to take its place at the 
council table of nations and to exercise a shaping influence in the for- 
mulation and carrying out of world policies. That time has now come 
in the history of the United States. [Applause.] AVe have expand- 
ed across the continent, and have settled and developed the waste 
places. We have established, after a long debate, and by an epoch- 
making military struggle, the unity of the nation and the supremacy 
of the national ideal. AVe have developed great systems of transpor- 
tation and manifold industries, and we have accumulated vast national 
wealth. We have made creditable contributions to science, to 
literature, and to the arts. The question now to press upon ourselves 
is. Are we ready and equipped to bear the responsibilities that the close 
of this war will place upon the American people? Are we prepared? 

In one of the noblest orations of antiquity, Pericles used these 
words in speaking to his fellow citizens of the Athenians who had died 
in the war with Sparta: "The whole earth is in the sepulchre of 
famous men ; and their glory is not graven only on stone over their 

aive eartb, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven 
into the stuff of other men's lives. For you it now remains to rival 
what they have done, and, knowing the secret of happiness to be 
freedom and tJie secret of freedom to be a brave heart, squarely to face 
the war and all its perils." Surely these sonorous words sounding 



across the centuries seem almost to have been meant for our ears to 
hear. We are to weave our lives, our aspirations and our ideals into 
the stuff of other men's lives ; we are to remember that the secret of 
happiness is freedom and that the secret of freedom is a brave heart, 
and then we are squarely to face this war and all that it brings in its 
train. 

There is much earnest speech among us in regard to national 
preparedness, and it is urged by many and influential voices that 
we must beware lest the calamity that fell so suddenly upon 
Europe should be forced against our wish or will upon us. Surely 
we must reckon with facts as they are, and not as we would wish 
them to be. [Applause.] We may turn our faces to the stars, 
but we must have a care to keep our feet on the firm ground. 
Nevertheless, there is a more serious and a more important 
aspect of national preparedness that has not yet been so much 
dwelt upon. Our chiefest task, Mr. President, is to prepare our 
hearts and our minds to do our full duty as Americans to bind up the 
wounds of a stricken world and fo lead the way to that new construc- 
tion of the overturned political fabric which, if it is to endure, can 
rest upon no other principles than those of democracy, of freedom, of 
civil liberty, of international responsibility and honor, to which we 
profess such earnest allegiance and through faith in which our nation 
has grown great. [Applause.] 

It is true of nations, as of men, that we are our brothers' keepers. 
Their interests are increasingly our interests, and our interests are 
increasingly theirs. We have no wish or will to interfere with prob- 
lems that belong to Europe alone; but surely noninterference does 
not mean absence of interest in them or an absence of influence upon 
them or over them. In the Monroe Doctrine, in the policy of the 
Open Door, and in the widespread objection to Oriental immigration, 
we have given concrete evidences of a developed and developing inter- 
national viewpoint and international policy. We must, by taking 
counsel together, by study and by reflection, prepare ourselves to say 
to a listening world what our international policy is and what it is to 
be ; what influence we aim to exert and why, and what ideals we 



propose to hold aloft in the hope that they may guide and help other 
peoples. 

Before we can hope to influence others we must be sure of 
ourselves. We must without delay undertake the better conservation 
and organization of our own national resources of every kind. We 
must make it plain that, by voluntary effort and without sacrificing 
our traditional American principles to the demands of a bureaucratic 
organization, we too can effectively mobilize the industrial resources 
of a great nation. It is for American democracy to prove that 
it can secure the highest type of national preparedness and the 
highest type of national effectiveness without ceasing to be either 
American or democratic. In the recently established Trade Commis- 
sion and in the Tariff Commission, whose quick establishment is so 
strongly supported, we shall have governmental instrumentalities 
which might readily be made the centre for co operative industrial 
effort and for the more complete equipment of this nation in respect to 
all the great basic industries. The problem of labor must be faced with 
courage, with frankness, and with sympathy ; for industrial peace 
and satisfaction is as necessary a prerequisite of international 
peace and contentment as it is of national security and happiness. 
[iVpplause.] 

Moreover, it behooves us to cultivate a becoming national modesty. 
It was our old friend, Mr. Bryce, who pointed out to us in the Am- 
erican Commonwealth, that the enormous force of public opinion is a 
danger, a danger to the people themselves as well as to their leaders, 
because it fills them with an undue confidence in their own wisdom, 
their own virtue, and their own freedom. In order to guard our- 
selves against the vice of self-complacency we must constantly re-ex- 
amine and re state our moral and our political ideals, and we must 
not fail to give due weight to the moral and political ideals of other 
people. 

The world mission that we might have waited for through another 
century has come to us today from the hand of fate. We can re- 
main true to the injunction of WAsiiiN(rroN that we steer clear of 
permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, and yet do 



our full iuternational duty ; for what we should seek is not an alliance, 
entangling or otherwise, with any portion of the foreign world, but 
rather relations with the whole of that world and with every part of it, 
in order that in a spirit of friendship and good temper and construc- 
tive statesmanship we may do our full share in raising that world 
to a higher plane. 

jVo one dare predict just what the end of this world war will be^ 
or when that end will come. It is possible, of course, that this cata- 
clysm marks the end of centuries of progress, and it is possible that 
man in 1914 crossed over the watersh6d of civilization and is now to 
descend on the other side towards steadily growing barbarism and the 
steadily extending rule of force. That I say is possible ; but I for 
one am an unconquerable optimist. I prefer to read history 
differently and to see in this appalling catastrophe what the Greek 
called a katharsis, or cleansing of the spirit. I prefer to think of it 
as history's way of teaching beyond peradventure or dispute the 
fallacy and the folly of the old ways and the old policies. Surely 
that struggle for the balance of power which the historian Stubbs de- 
scribed as the principle which gives unity to the plot of modern 
history, — surely that struggle has proved its futility. Surely we can 
see the vanity of Ententes and Alliances and of a division of the 
world into heavily armed camps each waiting for an opportunity or 
for an excuse to pounce upon the other. Surely the international 
politics of a Palmerston, or a Disraeli, or a Bismarck, striking and 
splendid as they were in their own day, — surely those policies are 
put behind us and are outgrown forever. 

A democratic federated people can teach the world democracy and 
the use of the federative principle. A people devoted to civil liberty 
and to international honor, no less lightly held than the honor of 
an individual — that people, can teach the world the foundations 
upon which to rebuild the shattered fabric of international law and 
of broken treaties. 

The outlook before the people of the United States has changed. 
When Joseph Chamberlain returned from South Africa his 
message to the people of Great Britain was : " You must learn to 



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think imperially." The message which any American alive to the 
world's situation to-day must bring to his fellow citizens is, you 
must learn to think internationally ! Domestic policies and problems 
are perhaps no less important than they have been in the past, but 
by their side and for the immediate future surpassing them in 
interest and in importance are the international problems and the 
international policies of the people of the United States. For those 
problems and for those policies we must prepare — prepare thought- 
fully, seriously, speedily; for when the war shall be ended, we may 
truly say, as Gambetta said to the French people forty-five years ago, 
" Now that the danger is past, the difficulties begin." [Applause.] 



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